Re: dired-view-command-alist

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> On Tue, Oct 05, 2004 at 02:31:21AM +0200, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
>> When more then one file is marked, it displays something like
>> 
>> ! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview]
>> 
>> in the minibuffer.  The string "[3 files]" can be omitted because at
>> the same time the names of the marked files are displayed in a
>> separate window.  Thus "! on *:" is sufficient.  
>
> I disagree -- I find the "[3 files]" info useful.  Despite the filenames
> being displayed in a separate, the presence of that string in the prompt is
> more noticeable (maybe that sounds surprising, but when I give a command that
> I know is going to prompt me, I tend to focus on the minibuffer, so a warning
> there is much more likely to wake me up than a new window).
>
> The presence of the actual number of files seems to have a similar effect:
> because it's not a fixed string, it's somehow more noticeable than for
> instance a simple "[multiple files]" would be.
>
> So I'd say keep the "[<N> files]" stuff in the prompt.

An a different tack, one of my proposals was to bind * to inserting a
text propertied string showing <marked files> or so.  Perhaps it would
be more straightforward to just insert the file names themselves
(shell-quoted, of course).

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum